The Myth of Conservative America

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/07/08/the-myth-of-conservative-america/

The Myth of Conservative America

by Mike Hall, Jul 8, 2007

Ever since Newt Gingrich & Co. came on the scene in 1994, we’ve heard the following drumbeat over and over: America is not just swinging to the right, it’s rushing to the right. American voters are more deeply conservative in their views than ever before. It’s time to kiss progressive politics goodbye when it comes to economic and social issues.


The 2006 election put progressives such as Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown in office who support raising the minimum wage and changing course in Iraq.


Just because something is loudly repeated over and over, doesn’t mean it’s right—or should we say correct?

But a new report by Media Matters for America and the Campaign for America Future—The Progressive Majority: Why Conservative America is a Myth, shows that most of us in the United States are far more tolerant, open and progressive in our views than we are characterized as by pundits and commentators.

And those pundits and commentators declaring the nation’s rightward spin are not just the Rush Limbaughs or the talking heads on Fox News. The report finds the nation’s mainstream media is repeating the same mantra.

It should come as no surprise that conservative media figures repeat the myth that most Americans share their views. Even when Democrats win, conservatives claim that their ideology is still dominant.

But was not just conservatives; in fact, they were simply repeating what they had heard mainstream journalists say for some time. “This is basically not a liberal country,” said John Harris, then of The Washington Post and now of The Politico, in May 2005. “It’s a conservative country. Previewing the Democrats’ prospects for victory three weeks before the 2006 election, CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley asserted that Democrats have been “on the losing side of the values debate, the defense debate and, oh yes, the guns debate. (Crowley presented no evidence that Democrats had been “on the losing side” of any of these debates.)

FULL story at link.

...but the system has been rigged by the corporatists and theocrats so that the foundations of American politics -- its laws, ethos, and priorities -- will be conservative for the foreseeable future. What the voters might want is irrelevant. :-(

allowing this Party to be triangualted so far to the Right, it is, at times, unrecognizeable.

We have enabled them to do this, too, by voting Party over platform. We have held our noses and votes for the (D) after the name, rather than the issues and priorities of the candidate. We have allowed the Party to think it's okay to put up RW corporatist DINOs election after election, and we'll vote for them, because "they are better than the Republican". We need to STOP THIS NOW. We need to DEMAND better, more resposive, more Democratic candidates, and we need to use out votes to send that message. They can continue to serve the Corporations and lose our votes, or they can put up and support candidates that will support US and OUR WILL over the corporations and win our votes back.

TC

Those f@#$ers try to make liberal a dirty word -- we need to embrace it.

You're right. It should be embraced.

In general, Americans are such a "go along to get along" bunch, that if they get the impression (however valid) that their fellow citizens are opposed to their views, they simply shut up. Imagine the potential bonanza for organizations that can come between Americans and their deeply held convictions! This underscores the danger of following the polls instead of one's core beliefs. As a country, we are a lot more liberal than the corporate media lets us realize.

and distortions... We need to make that clear for these wingnuts that still want to spin their story of dominance that no longer (if ever) exists!

And now we should make it clear that we're not going to accept lies any more. We can be very tolerant of other viewpoints in a democratic frame of discussion, but when people try to rewrite the rules of the debate or lie and distort to others what is going on, we need to make sure THEY PAY A PRICE for that any more!

Whether it is suing folks (like Kerry DIDN'T do when the Swift boaters came after him), or making sure we get the right votes counted by hand if necessary to hear what people really voted on, or other issues of truth and consequence, we no longer are going to "accept" their so-called "truth"!

America has always been liberal--and we're getting more liberal. The young voters of today are the most Democratic generation ever - more Democratic than the youngest voting generations of the New Deal and the 1960s.

Furthermore, IQ's are going up. This alone spells doom for the political Right.

All through the eight long years of Reagan's administration, I could hardly turn on a TV newscast or pick up a paper without seeing or hearing that he was "the most popular president since World War II."

And I kept thinking, "Who are these people who love Reagan so much?"

When he was out of office, oh, about 1990 or so, the New York Times finally published an article admitting that Reagan had enjoyed only average popularity and that at times his ratings had fallen below those of Jimmy Carter.

That's when I became skeptical of polls in general and statements about polls.

That feeling was only intensified when I was told that 90% of the population supported the Gulf War of 1991.

That summer, I was traveling on a domestic flight when I heard a fligh attendant told a Middle Eastern couple that she had been opposed to the Gulf War but had kept quiet because nobody else opposed it.

I spoke up, "I opposed it."

About six people in the area said that they had opposed it, too, on a randomly gathered subsection of the passenger load of a 747, and of course, there had been huge marches in cities all around the country.

So where were the 90% who supported the war except in the minds of the perpetrators of the latest Big Lie?

You may be laboring under the myth that gun ownership is a "conservative" position...

The DLC (not all Dems!) got on the wrong side of the gun debate in the early '90s, and the Feinstein Ban was probably the single biggest factor in the loss of the House and Senate in November of 1994. In '00, Gore lost TN and WV on the gun issue, and with them he'd have won even without Florida (and don't think the gun issue wasn't in play in the Gunshine State, either). FINALLY dropping the ban-more-guns thing after the '04 loss allowed Webb, Tester, and other pro-gun-owner Dems to win in '06, thereby taking back the Senate.

The thing is, half or more of gun owners are Dems and indies, and we are mostly NOT hunters, contrary to the misperceptions of some party strategists. The ban-nonhunting-guns thing IS a loser in all but a handful of states.

Dems and the Gun Issue - Now What? (written in '04, largely vindicated in '06, IMO)



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The Conservative Roots of U.S. Gun Control